Chen Deming

Minister of Commerce, China

Date of Birth: 1949
Place of Birth: Shangai

Born in 1949 in Shanghai, Chen studied business at Nanjing University, took a doctorate in management and joined the Communist Party in 1974. A job as assistant manager of a Taizhou meat-packing factory led to provincial leadership posts in Jiangsu, a coastal province and now one of China's wealthiest. Mayor of Suzhou in 1998-2000, he was Suzhou Party Secretary (a more powerful post) until 2002. Suzhou is the site of the export processing zones that attracted investment from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore in the 1990s and now churn out China's high-tech exports.

In 2002, the Party moved him to the less-developed Shaanxi Province, but in 2006 Chen moved up to the State Development and Reform Commission as Vice-Chairman. In December 2007, he took up his current post as Commerce Minister.